A day after Telegram was temporarily banned by the Centre, the messaging platform’s founder and CEO Pavel Durov accused Reliance of “sabotaging” access to the chat app’s users outside India, and speculated whether the telecom operator and WhatsApp — Telegram’s main rival — were behind the “recent lobbying effort” to suspend the app in the country.He claimed this was done deliberately as part of a “competitive war,” arguing the telecom company was “partly owned” by Meta, which operates WhatsApp.Durov said that access to Telegram was being compromised by Reliance via a “rogue method” called BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) hijacking, a technique in which internet traffic is misdirected by falsely advertising the route to a website or online service. He said this was affecting users outside of India, where the country’s blocking orders do not apply, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE).“Indian telecom Reliance is sabotaging access to Telegram for millions of users OUTSIDE India (including the UAE) via a rogue method called BGP hijacking. The sabotage seems intentional, as Reliance has ignored multiple reports,” he said on social media platform X.“This may be part of a competitive war, as Reliance is partially owned by Meta — the company behind WhatsApp… Such abuse of global Internet routing is alarming. I wouldn’t be surprised if Reliance/WhatsApp were also behind the recent lobbying effort to ban Telegram in India,” he added.A senior industry executive said that the network flagged by Durov does not belong to that of Reliance Jio, and could belong to Reliance Communications, according to internet routing databasesReliance and Meta did not respond to a request for comment. Telegram accepts press queries through a dedicated bot on the platform, which has been unavailable since the service was banned in India until June 22.Meta holds a 30% stake in Reliance Enterprise Intelligence Limited, an AI-focused joint venture with Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL). Additionally, Meta holds a 9.99% stake in Jio Platforms Limited (JPL), the digital and telecom services arm of Reliance IndustriesStory continues below this adWhat is BGP, and what claim did the Telegram founder make?The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the internet’s routing system. It tells networks across the world how to reach specific IP addresses. If a network falsely announces that it is the preferred route to a destination, traffic can be diverted, intercepted or blackholed. This is known as BGP hijacking.Every major telecom operator, cloud provider, content delivery network and internet service provider runs an Autonomous System (AS), a large network identified by a unique number. BGP is the protocol these networks use to tell each how traffic through these networks should reach a specific IP address.For instance, the way it would ideally work in Durov’s example is that when a user in the UAE opens Telegram, multiple networks exchange BGP announcements to determine the best route to Telegram’s servers. The internet functions because networks generally trust these announcements.For a rough analogy, imagine the internet as a major highway, and BGP announcements as connecting streets, where each street corresponds to a particular service. If one connecting street falsely advertises its location as someone else’s, then some of the traffic on the highway could believe the false flag and join that particular street instead.Story continues below this adDurov alleged that AS18101, identified in routing databases as ‘Reliance Communications’, announced Telegram’s IP address space to the global routing table, causing users outside India, including in the UAE, to face access problems. So, if other network carriers like internet service providers and telecom operators accept the BGP announcement made by this network, it would take traffic away from Telegram, thereby impacting the service for several users.Why was Telegram banned?On Tuesday, the IT Ministry issued an order to block Telegram in India until June 22, at the behest of the National Testing Agency (NTA, which is responsible for conducting the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET).The block was recommended over Telegram’s alleged role in allowing people to share leaked questions from the May 3 exam, which led to its cancellation, and subsequent claims being made by accounts on the service of having access to leaked versions of the re-examination paper, which is scheduled for June 21.In a statement, the NTA said that over the last few weeks, Telegram channels operating openly on the platform demanded sums ranging from a few thousand to several lakhs of rupees from candidates and their families, in exchange for purported access to the re-examination paper.Story continues below this adAs per the NTA, some of these channels were openly advertising their purpose through their names: “PAPER LEAKED NEET”, “Re-NEET 2026”, “Private Mafia”, and “REE NEET MAFIAA”. It clarified that no such papers were available “outside the secured examination chain,” it added.The government has also directed the app to disable its message-editing feature until June 30. According to the NTA, the message-editing feature on Telegram, in its present form, permits a channel administrator to edit the content of a previously posted message – including the substitution of attached files such as PDFs – while the original send-time stamp is retained.